WASHINGTON — The discharge petition to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files is poised to get its 218th and final signature after the swearing-in of Arizona Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva on Wednesday.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., will swear in Grijalva around 4 p.m., shortly before the House takes a procedural vote on advancing a bill to reopen the government and fund a slew of federal agencies through the end of the fiscal year.
One of the first acts Grijalva is expected to take as a congresswoman is to sign the petition compelling the Justice Department to release its full investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Grijalva’s swearing-in comes 50 days after she won her special election — a record-long time for a member to wait to be sworn in after decisively winning their race.
“Why is Speaker Johnson taking the unprecedented step of refusing to swear me in?” Grijalva wrote in an op-ed for USA Today this week. “The only notable difference between me and others elected during special elections in 2025 who were promptly sworn in is that I would be the decisive 218th signature on a discharge petition to force a vote on releasing all files related to Jeffrey Epstein, a onetime friend of President Donald Trump.”
Although Grijalva won her seat in mid-September, the House has not been in session since then. That’s because lawmakers adjourned on Sept. 19 and Johnson kept them out to keep pressure on Senate Democrats to accept the Republican-led spending resolution to reopen the government.
The Senate passed that bill on Monday night, so House members will return for votes on Wednesday.
A discharge petition is a procedural tool lawmakers can use to force GOP leadership to hold a vote on something they otherwise would stonewall — so long as it gets a majority of the House to sign on.
In this case, Republican Rep. Thomas Massie filed the petition in early September and three other Republicans have already signed on: Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, and Lauren Boebert of Colorado.
Once Grijalva signs on, the petition is “frozen” and printed into the congressional record, according to House rules. The petition must then sit for seven legislative days before a signatory of the petition can request a floor vote.
After that, leaders would only have two days to schedule the vote. That means the earliest a vote could happen is likely the first week of December.
“That doesn’t mean that the Speaker of the House might try to do some shenanigans with the discharge petition, but if it all goes the way we want, it will go early December,” Rep. Jim McGovern, the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee, told reporters on Tuesday.
For example, Johnson could introduce a motion to table, which would only require a simple majority to pass. But if all Democrats and the four Republican signatories stick together on the floor, the petition would pass.
However, it’s unclear if the bill would survive the Republican-led Senate where it would need substantial GOP support to overcome the 60-vote filibuster hurdle.
GOP leadership has been wary of forcing a vote on the matter due to opposition from President Donald Trump, with a White House official telling the Deseret News in early September that a signature on the petition would “be viewed as a very hostile act to the administration.”
Instead, Republican leaders have looked for other ways to appease lawmakers demanding transparency, such as passing a resolution to encourage the House Oversight Committee to continue its current investigation into Epstein — an inquiry that has already resulted in the Justice Department handing over thousands of pages to lawmakers last month.
But Massie has argued that resolution only requires the Oversight Committee to publish the documents that are handed over by the DOJ, whereas he wants the DOJ itself to release all documents in its possession.